The Present Condition of Economic History

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THE

QUARTERLY JOURNAL

OF

ECONOMICS

FEBRUARY, 1920

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF
ECONOMIC HISTORY 1

SUMMARY

Treatises of the past decade, 209. — Economic history has been
studied by periods, 213. — The genetic point of view, 214. — The con-
tent of economic history, 217. — Need of a synthesis of development,
218. — Dependence of economic history on history and economics, 220.
— Conclusion, 224.

Of late years economic history, in common with other
studies, has suffered from the effects of the great war,
both in diminished production and in the death on the
field of battle of some of its younger devotees. And
each of the four great countries contributing to the field
of economic history has lost from natural causes at
least one of its distinguished scholars. Levasseur's long
career of useful work came to a close early in the decade.
He had begun to contribute to our knowledge of French
economic history as far back as 1854; he died before the
second volume of his Histoire du Commerce de la France
left the press in 1912. Levasseur occupied at the Col-
lege de France the only chair in France that resembled
economic history. In America, Callender died before

1 Read at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, December 29,
1919.

209

210 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

attaining the ripeness of scholarship which his early
work promised. He has been a model for younger men,
and his influence lives.

Germany no longer has before it the colossal figure
of a Schmoller, surrounded by a seminar of disciples
destined to spread his influence in distant parts and
fulfill his wish for more careful special studies on eco-
nomic history. Schmoller was an historical economist,
but his methods called for painstaking researches in
economic history. His influence in our generation, upon
such scholars as Ashley, 1 Gay, Seligman, and Unwin,
may be compared with that of Ranke in the field of polit-
ical history a generation or so ago. It seems probable
that the work of Ranke will be more enduring than that
of Schmoller. Economists have expressed themselves
as disappointed with Schmoller' s life work, as partially
summed up in his Orundriss. The historical method, as
applied to economic studies, seems in large part to have
failed at the hands of both the younger and older group
of historical economists.

A few months ago Cunningham, the dean of English
economic historians, passed away. He left but one work
of importance and that practically his first, published
in 1882 but greatly extended in subsequent years. It
was the first textbook which covered even approxi-

1 Sir "William Ashley, brilliant among economic historians, wrote on April 10, 1919,
concerning his introduction to economic history " My undergraduate training was as
a historian, in the Oxford History School which was so largely the creation of Stubbs
Then, as a young graduate, I was greatly impressed by the lectures of Arnold Toynbee,
under whom also I did some little personal work I happened also upon the Essays of
Cliffe Leslie — and I can still remember the novel glow of conscious mental enjoyment
with which I read them His book made me aware of the German Historical School of
Economists, and I found in Schmoller's writings — such as the Kleingewerbe and in
some things of Schonberg on Zunfte — examples of the way in which the institutional bias
I had received from Stubbs could be continued with the Economic interest, I will not
say created but at any rate strengthened, by Toynbee Of course at the back of it all,
I suppose, are the facts that I was myself the son of a London artisan, and also came
from a very serious nonconformist circle. And the ultimate purpose of all my early
mediaeval studies was to cast light on the general movement of Economic evolution
and especially on its most recent stages."

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 211

mately the whole of English economic history. 1 Cun-
ningham's work has been criticized frequently. It
cannot stand the test of more specialized research, it
often confuses the most important issues, and nowhere
does it stimulate to further study, except by way of
correction. But it remains a useful compilation of facts
put together so as to show certain causal relations,
especially in so far as these may be found in parallel
studies of economics, politics, and religion.

Fortunately we still have with us some of the pioneers.
Bolles, the first to write an Industrial History of the
United States (1878), has informed me that he under-
took his task because a larger cooperative work of the
same character had failed, and he saved all there was
from ruin. Germany still has Brentano and Biicher,
tho the latter is not, strictly speaking, an economic
historian. The first volume of Bucher's Lebenserin-
nerungen, which we await with interest, is to appear
soon. Altho these men, now dead or aging, have played
their part, their influence continues. Studies of the
kind made when they were at their height have also
been made during the last decade — careful minute
researches in widely scattered fields of activity.

Perhaps out of the mass of scattered researches re-
cently published, we are justified in selecting three sub-
jects of special significance: enclosures, capitalism, and
labor. The enclosure movement has trained the wits
and taxed the industry of scholars on both sides of the

i On February 22, 1919, Cunningham described bis earliest steps, in the following
words. " It was rather accidentally that I came to devote myself to Economic History.
It had a place in the History Course at Cambridge from the first (1878), and as there was
no teacher of the subject, I was asked by the History Board to do my best with it I had
some knowledge of Political Economy and did my best to get up the History. I found a
textbook was much needed and managed to write one in 1880 I see from the authorities
quoted that I was acquainted with Scbanz, Ochenkowski and Brentano, but my chief
personal and conscious debt was to Roscher whose monograph on eighteenth century
English writerB was most instructive I tried to understand what pamphleteers and
others were arming at, and to read the facts of the time in the light of the ideas of the
time, as far as I could "

212 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

Atlantic. It has thus far reached its culmination, tho
perhaps not its conclusion, in the work of Tawney, one
of the finest products of the decade.

Sombart was the first to give a really historical turn
to studies on capitalism. He blazed the path in the
direction of the origin of capitalism and, within our
decade, in the direction of the psychological side of its
development. His chief enduring work, however, will
be to stimulate others. In Sombart's own country,
Heynen and especially Strieder have made important
additions to our knowledge, and in England we note
the contributions of Scott and Unwin.

The history of labor is still in the pioneer stage, but
in America it has been carried a step farther by the
volumes of Commons. The fact that three out of the
four papers on economic history read at this session of
the Historical Association deal with the history of la-
bor, is not without significance. Our current researches
reflect the world's interest in capitalism and labor, and
we can with difficulty avoid the conclusion that these
will occupy the centre of interest for years to come. On
these subjects we need studies in great numbers. It goes
without saying, that to be useful, they must be above
all impartial and objective, unlike the book called The
Town Labourer, recently written by the Hammonds.

If one were to set before himself the task of enumerat-
ing work of high excellence by individuals, published
during the last ten years, he would be compelled to men-
tion Scott's three volumes on the early Joint Stock Com-
panies (1910-12), Lloyd's Cutlery Trades (1913), and
Gray's English Field Systems (1915). As these books
exemplify, the progress has been substantial; but it has
been practically all in the direction of monographic
studies. At the other extreme, of course, are the nu-
merous textbooks, more or less elementary and aiming

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 213

at general presentation; but with these we are not now
concerned.

In the study of economic history we find that, while
economists are primarily interested in topics, especially
those of recent development, historians have a pref-
erence for specialization in some period of history.
Whether the historian has made his choice by way of
reaction from the older accounts, such as that of Adam
Anderson, which began at the creation, or whether it is
in imitation of the laudable example of nineteenth
century political historians, I do not know. If the
latter, then the imitator, to be logical, should include
contemporary foreign institutions and should make
comparative studies.

Certainly the choice of periods has some justification
in the able work of Schanz, Below, and Vinogradoff.
But there is one objection to it which is gradually being
perceived. In the hands of lesser scholars it leads to
the erection of stone walls at the beginning and at the
end of the periods in question. 1 To perceive the sum
total of development in one's own field, no matter how
inadequate that perception may be, is the task of the
specialist; to understand the causal forces behind that
development is the goal. But it is one often beyond his
reach.

A distinguished American economist has belittled the
study of the past for every reason except to show that it
is different from the present. He holds that the institu-
tions of the present have not grown out of the past but
have arisen out of needs developed in modern times.
Stubbs has aptly expressed the contrary, namely, that
the roots of the present lie deep in the past. All eco-
nomic history, all institutional history in fact, proves

1 By the principle of development or evolution, alone, can researches m the natural
or social sciences be summed up

214 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

this. The Industrial Revolution was but a quickening
pace of society. Perhaps the studies of the future will
show in detail that the Industrial Revolution, like the
French, was a continuation and an accentuation of a
slowly developing movement — the influence of the mar-
ket on industry and agriculture and the growing domi-
nance of the man possessing capital over the man
possessing none.

The practice of studying economic history by periods
is at its worst when the periods studied are political. It
is not to be expected that economic history could at
once throw over the political traditions of a generation,
but it is a reasonable hope that this is the ultimate goal.

At the opposite pole from the historian who deals
with closed periods of history is the broad sweep of the
genetic economist who knows neither time nor place.
The extremes of each method are perhaps equally ob-
jectionable, but the advantages of genetic studies have
been too clearly demonstrated to be longer ignored.
The essentials of changes in any field can be summed up
and expressed with emphasis in the form of stages of
development, not of history. A few pages can elucidate
a volume of facts. Moreover, the whole development
from first to last is perceived and the present and past
can be connected. Genetic studies would provide a
leaven for an otherwise undirected and uninteresting
subject. The view of Hildebrand that the exchange of
goods has passed through three stages, barter, money,
and credit, has been a stimulus to research that has no
doubt discredited the stages in question, yet has led to
the discovery of new ones and has given rise to an em-
phasis upon the exchange of goods which, however
misplaced by some, remains fundamental.

No one who pursues the genetic trail far, can fail to
see its possible shortcomings. It is difficult, indeed,

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 215

when following the line of development to stop at the
proper places for the study of causation. As we trace
the stages through which agriculture has passed, we may
forget the influences that determine the changes; for
example, the growth of a metropolitan demand for
foodstuffs or a shift in industrial production which
robs the countryside of its manufactured by-products.
Forewarned, however, is forearmed, and the guilt of
neglecting causes may be expected to be peculiar to
individual scholars rather than to the method of ap-
proach.

In genetic treatment lies the danger, on the other
hand, of a return to deductive study as contrasted with
deductive presentation of results. There is a suggestion
of this evil in Lloyd's Cutlery Trades; and in Miss
Hazard's Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts (1913)
we have an apparently well-developed case. While
Lloyd follows the accepted stages of industrial develop-
ment in England, Miss Hazard follows more or less
closely those of German history. The obvious danger
is that historical researches will tend to find illustrations
for preconceived theories of development.

Genetic studies are usually held to be incompatible
with comparative studies. He who travels far cannot
cover a wide area. Those valuable comparisons and
checks to generalizations which are based on narrow re-
search are not so likely to be made. The success of com-
parative studies in religion and philology is paralleled by
similar studies in history, notably in the work of Gross
on the gild merchant, Haskins on Norman institutions
and Meitzen and Gray on village settlements. But it
should be noted that in one sense genetic studies are
fundamentally comparative. One stage is compared
with another, rather than the institutions of one coun-
try with those of another. An obvious advantage of

216 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

such comparison would be the avoidance of anachron-
ism, the ever-present sin of historiography. Unques-
tionably the ideal would be to cast aside the apparent
contrast of comparative and genetic studies f amiliar to
the biologist, and to create a larger genesis based on
parallel developments in various lands and continents.
Investigations of ancient Roman history, based on a
study of tribal conditions among the barbarous peoples
of modern times, show how genetic a comparative study
may become. The same would be true of studies of out-
of-the-way places in the world such as missionaries
might today be making for us, if only there were some
agency for organizing and utilizing their services.

The genetic point of view is as ancient as Hesiod and
Vergil. It has been applied to economic development
in recent times by Storch, List, Roscher, Schmoller, and
Biicher. It is historical economics without the partic-
ular affiliations of either the younger or the older school.
The logical result is a science of genetic economics, or
a theory of economic history. It is to be noted that this
is not economic history and never can be treated as such.
The former deals with theories of what the past has
been; the latter with the facts of the past. But genetic
economics would be a stimulus to economic history
itself; and it would prepare for the use of the economist
and the sociologist materials which otherwise are beyond
their reach. The historian sometimes marvels at the
theorist's easy leap from primitive times to the era
beginning with the Industrial Revolution, and at the
nonchalance with which he ignores well worked-out
historical developments of the intervening period. It
is just here that genetic economics might step in, to
provide the missing link between intensive detailed
historical studies and theoretical exposition of the main
developments.

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 217

It must be confessed that our faith in the leavening
effect of theory on a study of facts has not always been
justified. Altho economic history has for generations
been dealt with by economic theorists, it has never
evolved an adequate content, or an analysis of its own
scope, comparable to that of economics itself. The
content of economic history results from the practices
of economic historians of the period 1750-1850 — his-
torians such as Anderson, Gulich, and Torrens. Ap-
parently Torrens was the first, or nearly the first, to
write an Industrial History (1846). This title, adopted
by many successors, places emphasis upon industry in
a large sense, in other words, production. It implies
that there is no recognized place for distribution. When
economic history came under the influence of historical
economics in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
there was some disposition to turn to distribution.
Thorold Rogers made an historical study of wages but
found very few followers, none to labor on the same
scale. The work of Steffen did not prove constructive
or suggestive. Just before the beginning of the late
war several articles appeared in English and German
journals on the subject of the regulation of wages in
England from the Black Death onward. These tended
to modify considerably the conclusions of Rogers on
the subject, but up to date have not been brought to
a head. Generally speaking, economic historians, as
distinct from historical economists, are still interested
primarily in production. At times they deal with
the factors of production — the orthodox land, labor,
capital, and management; but their chief concern is
with the processes of production, such as agriculture,
manufacture, and commerce. In the handling of these,
there has been too little advance since the eighteenth
century.

218 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

But this is not all. Even the treatment of the proc-
esses of production is incomplete. Collectional produc-
tion, the economic cultures (other than agriculture), and
storage or the production of time utility, are generally
ignored, at best but lightly dwelt upon. Storage is to-
day one of the three divisions of commerce, the other
two being the transportation and the exchange of goods.
Neither of the last two functions can be performed to
any great extent under modern conditions without a
well developed system of storing or warehousing. Nor
can we carry on agriculture or manufacture without it.
The neglect of storage is probably a survival of the
medieval attitude toward this kind of production; it
was then ignored, or when considered, condemned. But
developments of recent times help us to visualize the
function, especially when we see the urban warehouse
become the nucleus of a great marketing enterprise,
and a rural grain elevator become the means not only
for selling the products of the district but for purchasing
supplies from the outside.

The time is perhaps ripe for suggesting possibilities of
another kind. Without ceasing to write special trea-
tises, we might well devote more attention to synthesis;
to put together some of the isolated researches and to
give direction to future studies. Possibly some of us
have become impatient with economic history because
it turns to this field and to that, as some current need
dictates — at present to capital and labor, neglecting
other important phases of its recognized interests which
are necessary to an understanding of the whole. I
believe that in the long run the best interests of the
subject demand a balancing of the two: the study both
of the pressing problems of the present from the his-
torical viewpoint, and of those neglected branches of
economic history needed to round out our subject. The

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 219

desire for synthetic studies alternates with the demand
for analytic studies. We can see this swing of the pen-
dulum taking place at different times from the early
eighteenth century to the late nineteenth. The last
swing has been toward special studies in reaction from
the over-hasty generalizations of the older historical
economists. It has crystallized around the school of
Schmoller.

Any important synthesis at the present state of our
subject must be made with a central theme. The prob-
lem, then, is to find this theme, something around which
all else turns. There can hardly be unanimity of opinion
as to what this is; but there seems to be an increasing
tendency to accept the function of exchanging goods as
the centre about which all else really moves. Of course,
if we have historical development in mind, we should
broaden this into the satisfaction of human material
wants, attained at first by direct means and later by
exchange. If this procedure proves acceptable, then we
shall have such fundamental stages for all kinds of pro-
duction as the following: production (1) for immediate
use by the producer or his kin, (2) for sale directly to
the consumer, and (3) for sale through middlemen.

Of course we cannot but pause long and earnestly
before synthesizing. It may be a brilliant idea that we
need, or it may be a series of painstaking efforts. At
any rate we remember the premature essays of an-
thropologists and sociologists in this direction, some of
them as late as Oppenheimer's Theorie der Reinen und
Politischen Okonomie (1910). Even more than this,
however, is the fear already expressed that economic
history has not yet been given an adequate content or
a sufficiently wide scope. Synthesis based upon a con-
sideration of production alone can hardly be successful,
if we are later to lay equal stress upon distribution. It

220 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

may be, however, that our understanding of social evolu-
tion would be most advanced if we should divide our
work into three fields: economic history dealing with
production; social history with distribution; and
thirdly the history of economic thought. Whether
such a threefold division be maintained or not, each one
of the three will have to be studied with the others in
mind. This is the larger synthesis.

Perhaps most of the ills from which economic history
suffers are due to its continued dependence on history
and economics, on historians and economists. In this
dependence there is, to be sure, the advantage of getting
stimulus from outside; but it gives rise to countervailing
disadvantages. One of them is the lack of specialists.
Yet economic history is a relatively old science. It was
well under way in the eighteenth century, as we have
observed. Omitting all reference to the numerous works
that appeared in that century and in the early part of
the next, we may note that at least as early as 1853 an
academic lecture was delivered on the subject by Inama-
Sternegg, and at least as early as 1878 and 1879 the
same scholar wrote books bearing the words " economic
history " in the title. One of England's leading uni-
versities, Cambridge, gave to economic history a place
in the curriculum in 1878; tho there are in England
today few instructors in the subject. 1 At Harvard in
1883, Dunbar began his course on modern (since 1750)
economic history, the precursor of the one still given.

1 In 1908, according to L L Price (The Study of Economic History, p 5), there were
instructors in economic history in the f ollowing English institutions one at Oriel Col-
lege, Oxford, one at Manchester, and two at the London School of Economics I have
learned of no subsequent additions

The subject is, of course, widely taught in England, as is indicated by the following
quotation, but not by those giving their whole attention to it. " Before he [Cunning-
ham] died he saw his subject, which in my time at Cambridge (1890-94) was only one
paper in the History Tripos, mcluded in the Economic Tripos, and taught in every
University of any standing in the United Kingdom It spread from there to workers'
educational classes, and is now widely taught in secondary schools " Mrs Knowles,
Economic Journal, September, 1919, p 391

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 221

And in 1892 Harvard made Ashley the first professor of
economic history in America, 1 probably the first in any
country. Even in Germany, the land of so much pi-
oneering in this department of learning, there is, I
believe, no chair of economic history and very few
courses on the subject, almost none outside of Munich.
France has been much worse off.

This dependence has led to a duality of contribution
which breaks up the subject into two component parts.
While historians are primarily interested in the period
before the Industrial Revolution, recent economists are
primarily interested in that following the Revolution.
The continuity of development, which is as real as that
of the English constitution after the Puritan Revolution,
is destroyed and the whole movement of history per-
verted.

Economists, it is said, have of late been losing interest
in economic history. If this be so, the dependence of
economic history on the efforts of economists involves
a distinct loss to our science; especially does it seem so,
when we reflect upon the valuable contributions of such
economists as Rogers, Jevons, Dunbar, Taussig, 2 and
Brentano; and even more so, if we accept the verdict of
Professor Seligman that " all the great progress in eco-
nomic history has come from the economists and not
from the historians, or it has come from the historians

1 Professorships in economic history are now found in at least four American uni-
versities, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Minnesota Several professors in other institu-
tions devote their whole attention to the subject but occupy chairs in the department of
history or economics

8 On July 21, 1919, Professor Taussig wrote: " Professor Dunbar's own investiga-
tions were largely historical m character He had planned a financial history of the
United States and it has always been a matter of keen regret to me that he never was
able to carry out the project. He had given attention also to a number of topics in
economic history outside the United States, especially with regard to financial matters
such as the history of assignats m the French Revolution, and the development of Dutch
commerce and industry. Perhaps I ought to add that my own work on the Tariff His-
tory of the United States had its origin in suggestions made to me by Professor Dunbar
shortly after I graduated from Harvard College."

222 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

who were primarily trained in economics." 1 Whether
the economist has lost, or is losing, interest in economic
history because historical economics has become dis-
credited, or because the statistical method as applied to
historical data has failed, or because economic history-
has neglected to keep pace with the change in interest
from production to distribution, it is difficult to say. It
is only fair to point out that while the economist may be
losing interest in economic history as a study, he is, of
course, not departing from the old custom of using eco-
nomic historical data, notably for illustration. It is not
improbable that economic history, with its long expe-
rience with the subjection of the individual to the pro-
ducing group, has something special for the economist
of the near future, which the economist of the im-
mediate past, reared in a competitive individualistic
surrounding, did not possess. In other words, it is rea-
sonable to suppose that with the present growing
tendency toward cooperation and regulation which are
distinctive of the distant and medieval past, economists
will turn more and more to early experiences for a guide
to the future. This is, of course, paralleled by the atten-
tion which they have recently given to the teaching of
psychologists in the field of instincts and emotions, and
constitutes a valuable supplement to it.

It may be that the dependence of economic history is
responsible for the lack of an encyclopedia of economic
history, of a dictionary of economic historical terms, of
a single journal of economic history, now that the Vier-

1 It is interesting to contrast this view of Professor Sehgman (expressed in a private
communication dated May 6, 1919) with that of Sommerlad " The historian is master
in the house [of economic history) which he has built " Quoted by Brauer, Kntische
Studien . . . Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1912), p 189. Probably the two views may be
harmonized by saying that historians at first did the building but that historical econ-
omists have done the finishing; that historians developed production and economists
added distribution If the views expressed in this paper be correct, the third period will
be one in which the specialists in economic history will make over their science in accord
with its peculiar needs.

PRESENT CONDITION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 223

teljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte is
(apparently) defunct, and of a history of how economic
history has come into being.

In 1879, Inama-Sternegg said that the ultimate goal
was an economic history of mankind, written with-
out regard to territories and states. In 1910 Brodnitz
noted that as yet no economic history had been written.
And at the close of the decade this is still true; we have
no economic historical work of a general character.
There are only the many textbooks of single countries,
especially England, and innumerable highly specialized
and detailed researches. It would be tempting then to
say, were it not for doubts already expressed, that now
is the time for an economic history of mankind written
from the genetic point of view, with a more complete
analysis of economic phenomena, and based upon ade-
quate comparative studies. Perhaps the chief value of
such a suggestion at this moment is that it may serve as
a directive influence to our otherwise scattered studies.

If the dependence of economic history on history and
economics has worked on the whole to its disadvantage,
the remedy lies in specialization in economic history,
without giving up, however, the balance of emphasis
and training in the two mother subjects. The historian
is apt to be deficient in his understanding of the newer
forms of economic analysis, and the economist is likely
to know little about the latest historical researches.
The problems of economic history are peculiarly enough
its own to justify a more independent position. There
is a growing interest in our study on the part of those
who emphasize the economic interpretation of history;
and an equally great interest on the part of those who
are absorbed by the increasing prominence of the labor-
ing class and who wish to know the facts of past economic
development, facts which may help explain the present

224 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

status and point to the future outcome. It is not un-
likely that the increasingly large share that is being
taken by workmen in the management of the affairs of
cities and of states is going to lead to a study of eco-
nomic history, much as the victory of the middle class
led to a study of constitutional and political history.
The demand for economic history in the trade schools
and secondary schools generally seems to indicate that
neither the old history nor the current economics will
wholly answer the popular needs of the immediate
future.

And so in conclusion we may note that present tend-
encies are in the direction of greater emphasis on eco-
nomic history, after a period of partial eclipse; that in
the last few years stress has been put upon the history of
capital and labor because of the growing antagonism be-
tween the two; that this drift might be balanced by other
studies which reflect a more complete analysis of the
content of economic history; that the chronological and
periodic treatment might well be supplemented by the
genetic; and that the guidance of economic history,
until now in the able hands of historians and econo-
mists, might henceforth more profitably be lodged with
specialists in the field.

N. S. B. Gras.

University op Minnesota.